Hopping the Transformation Train

CIOs today are well-positioned with the executive support and cutting edge technologies to become more strategic, value-driven partners. While expectations are higher and timelines are shorter, our leaders are looking to CIOs and IT professionals for the edge they need today, or more precisely, the edge they needed yesterday.

As Dell and VMware’s CIO, I think of this as our Digital Hierarchy of Needs. At the bottom, we are expected to keep the trains running on time. In other words, our systems and applications must always be online and available. We can then build on this foundation by enhancing our processes and introducing innovative new tools and capabilities. If we don’t, we will never be able to transform into a digital-first business. To get there, we need to transform how we work with the business.

Here’s how:

Run the Trains on Time

It is impossible to change the conversation and drive towards a strategic vision that showcases the value of digitally transforming the business if we are continually explaining outages, performances issues and other imperfections. With the mantra of “customer #1,” we need to excel at the basics or Dell and VMware won’t be able to support our actual customers. This involves ensuring our infrastructure, systems and applications are rock solid, and building the credibility and “political capital” that increases the confidence that the team will keep it that way. Bottom line, we’re wasting our time talking strategy if we have repetitive outages or issues with email.

Create a Big Picture Vision

I’ve been a CIO for decades and I can tell you wholeheartedly that I want to be seen as a colleague, not a supplier. This is why I am excited to come to work. Once the foundation is in order, IT needs to shift away from being order takers towards becoming strategic consultants, partners and trusted advisors. We need to show demonstrable value, asking the right questions and providing our fellow business leaders with what they need to generate revenue, expand into new markets and pursue new industries. This also prevents IT from becoming a commodity and keeps invaluable intellectual property on the inside.

Take Part, Partner

Countless pundits have told us we need to tightly align IT with the business. Understanding our business partners’ strategies is a given, but we also need to have a vested interest in and share the responsibility for planning, executing and ensuring their success. At Dell, we enhanced our operating model so that our business portfolio leaders work directly with our business leaders. Also, our IT professionals work alongside their business peers, the ones who can actually make decisions to ideate, prototype, iterate and execute to create or enhance an end product. After all, their success is our success.

Earn Street Cred

To move up the hierarchy, you need to establish credibility running operations; demonstrating process efficiency and performance improvements; and most importantly, empowering your digitally-minded team members who think digital-first, to look for innovative ways to push boundaries and re-envision our world. The more value we bring to our business solutions, the more credibility we earn with our leaders and peers.

Summary

By no means am I suggesting that this is a step-by-step process. While building credibility takes time, we just don’t have time or patience to slowly climb our way up this hierarchy. As CIOs and IT professionals, we need to streamline processes and leverage the agile approaches and leading technologies that both make our legacy operations reliable and propel our digital transformation. If we don’t, the train will leave the station without us.

About Bask Iyer

Bask Iyer is the CIO at VMware. He joined VMware in March 2015 and now leads its global information and technology organization, a group that manages critical technology systems supporting the company’s worldwide business operations. In August 2018, Iyer added the responsibility of general manager, Edge/IoT for Dell Technologies. From December 2016 to August 2018, he also held the role of chief information officer for Dell.

A respected industry veteran, Iyer brings more than 25 years of experience in executing and driving change in traditional Fortune 100 manufacturing companies and Silicon Valley-based high technology firms. Prior to joining VMware, Iyer served as senior vice president and chief information officer at Juniper Networks, where he was responsible for the company’s technology and business operations, which included critical services around business transformation, global business services, IT and real estate, and workplace services. Before joining Juniper Networks, he served as chief information officer at Honeywell, and chief information officer at GlaxoSmithKline Beecham for consumer healthcare research and development, where he was also the company’s e-commerce leader. Iyer holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Annamalai University in India and a master’s degree in computer science from Florida Institute of Technology.